


But Don’t Forget About The…

by Guede



Series: An Epic Beacon Hills Drama [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Dubious Morality, F/M, Family Secrets, Father-Son Relationship, Gallows Humor, Human Hale Family, Laura Hale Lives, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Past Domestic Violence, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Build Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, The Hale Family (Teen Wolf) Lives, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-27 12:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19791325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: “Well, okay, so who’s on the Hales?” Jordan says instead, still blinking.“Nobody.”  Then John looks over again.  “They’re still busy trying to figure out how the fact that werewolves and magic are real can give them an angle in all of this.  I’m not that worried about it, and I don’t think you should be spending so much time thinking about your cover.  Unless you’re getting attached to this town.”“Nope,” Jordan immediately says.  He sits back, frowning, as John gets up, and then belatedly gets to his feet.  “I mean, as places go, it’s not the worst one where we’ve committed multiple homicides and then covered them up.”Backtracking a little bit.  But, before we find out what happened to Peter, it is important to know that John has had an eye on all of this and doesn't know any better than we do how we got here.





	1. Chapter 1

John’s barely gotten around to the front of his desk when Talia shoves him back into it, then hikes herself up him so that one of her knees is firmly planted on top of the desk. By then she’s got one hand knotted in his hair, dragging his head back so that her mouth is eating him from above. The other’s stripping him of his belt, dragging open his fly and pushing down his underwear so that the elastic snaps down the underside of his cock as she pulls that out.

He grimaces and she puts a thumb under his chin, urging it up into her mouth. Then peels their lips apart, her groan elbowing its way out from between their faces with palpable force as she sinks down onto his growing erection.

It’d be a little fast, except that the last two times Talia had stormed into his office, they hadn’t even made it to the desk. John spares a second to check where all the heartbeats are in the station, then braces himself as best he can against the desk and grabs her ass to help out. As a thanks, her mouth comes down on him again, hard and hungry, with a low, rolling noise pushing up behind her teeth that’s damn near werewolf.

Talia’s _not_ , just human, but every time she walks in and fucks him like this, he thinks if the world had flipped that around, Blackwood wouldn’t even have made it to town.

As it is, he’s pretty glad for the healing that lets him get off the desk once they’re done with just a couple pops from his spine. “If this is about your son again, I already told you I’d get one of the deputies to—”

“No, it’s not about my son,” Talia says. She perches on the corner of his desk, hair half-fallen out of its bun, patches of flush still cropping up around her neck and shoulders, and rummages in her purse until she turns up a packet of tissues. When John picks up the box on his desk, she looks up, then down at him. “Left leg. This is about Melissa, and the fact that she clearly understands how to operate under the radar because nobody would be this absurdly blatant if they weren’t _deliberately_ trying to blow their cover.”

Then she looks down to clean herself off, and misses the moment where John wants to pick her up and throw her out of the office.

At this point, he can almost justify bringing her in on werewolves because otherwise the level of near-misses would be driving him insane. Which, given all of the other balls he’s got to juggle, is not where he wants to be spending his energy.

He doesn’t really want to be spending his energy here either, but…“What are you talking about?” he says, as neutrally as he can.

“I thought you said you had enhanced hearing,” Talia says, glancing up. Her eyes flick over him and then linger around groin-level, just long enough for his cock to twitch. Then, a strong hint of smugness tinging her sarcasm, she bends down to pull up her skirt. “Even if you do have the forensic analysis around here locked down, and that does seem to be in some doubt, I think a stain like that would be so blatant the prudes in this town would have no choice but to call it out.”

John looks down at his pants. He considers the shape of the stain, then steps out of them and goes around the desk to get his back-up to his back-up clothes. It annoys Talia that that’s his only response, but not so much that he thinks she’s going to start up another round of sex, which really would make him force her out of the office. “Let me know what exactly has you worried about Melissa, and I’ll go let her know.”

“Oh, is that how we’re running this?” Talia says. Then steps back, her brow furrowing slightly.

It’s the way she phrases it that eats at John, not what she’s saying. In the grand scheme of things, sure, sex in another man’s office probably isn’t going to do much for John’s standing in this town, but it’s not hard for him to remember where that falls on his current list of priorities. In fact her annoying him like this actually a good way for him to focus on the order of those. “What are we even running?” he asks. He shakes out his spare trousers, giving them a slap against his hip, and then looks over at her. “No, really, I’m asking because I’ve been here pretty much all day pushing paper and making calls.”

“Well, that offer to take two of those bodies off your hands is still open. I do have that contact at the composting facility,” Talia says. She’s working the flirtation on auto-pilot, still preoccupied with judging him. Eventually she seems to conclude he’s over his irritated moment, and it’s safe for her to go back to scolding the werewolf. “And given that your daily calls don’t seem to have involved Melissa, I’m not entirely sure that whatever you tell her is going to be effective.”

“So maybe that’s where the mistake is about running this, if you think I’m going to order Melissa around,” John says. He hikes the trousers up over his knees, then realizes he forgot the belt and shuffles back around the desk to retrieve that. “That’s not how we work.”

Talia’s scent spikes with curiosity, as he figured it would. If she didn’t want him to think she was streaming every wolf documentary Netflix has to offer, she probably shouldn’t have chosen such an easily-cracked password. He hadn’t even had to go to Stiles for that one. “I did think that that was interesting, once you’d explained the concept of alphas. This idea of two of them—”

“Four,” John grunts, doing up his fly.

“Oh, Stiles and Scott are still learning their trade, at least from what I can tell,” Talia says dryly, and then smiles when John looks at her. “Your son is really _not_ subtle. Manipulating takeout orders at Peter’s firm so they spell WOLF PATROL?”

“I guess not, but your brother seems to find it fun to play along. Speaking of, if we’re going to talk about not blowing cover, maybe you could mention to him that Stiles can run across town in thirty minutes, tops, and it’d get me a couple less worried calls about his car lurking around the school,” John says, just as dry. When her eyes narrow, he doesn’t smile at her, just goes around and makes sure all of the used tissues are in his wastebin, and then ties off the top and changes the plastic liner. “And then what Melissa is doing…”

“People overreact about Peter. Cora’s still in high school and he has the same reason to drop by as anyone else with children attending it. And _she’s_ over at the hospital,” Talia says disapprovingly.

John waits. And then, when he gets nothing else, sighs and drops into his chair. “She works there.”

“Not right now, she doesn’t,” Talia snaps. “Laura assures me that she put in for a reduced schedule through the end of the month.”

“Well, that still means she works there,” John points out. “Also, if we’re talking about how we’re watching each other, Cora just started going back to school, and I’m still holding Stiles out.”

“ _Well_ , if my daughter’s going to be in the same building as at least one of your alphas, then I want the eyes of someone I trust on what’s going on there,” Talia says tightly.

“If you’re talking about Scott,” John starts, and then he bites it off. Takes a breath, glancing just enough away from her to check the time, and then lets it out. “Listen, Melissa is a good friend of mine, who I’ve known for a very long time, and everything we’ve had to do in this town, up to and including moving here, is her asshole ex’s fault. If she’s behaving a little oddly, she’s got a good reason. And look—just let me finish—”

Brows raised, Talia leans against the desk, smoothing over her clothes with unnecessarily exaggerated patience. 

“She has a lot on her mind. I’m not going to say she isn’t missing a thing or two because she’s that focused. But if you don’t tell me what you’re worried about, I can’t figure out how to handle it. And if you think you’re going to talk to Melissa about it yourself, I can’t okay that,” John says. He spreads his hands, holds them out for a second, and then lets his arms drop against the chair. “So, then?”

“So,” Talia says, in a very slow, deliberate tone, twisting her hair back into a perfect knot. “If she’s going to take time off because she’s claiming she and her son are too traumatized from the home invasion, then perhaps she shouldn’t have meetings with strangers in coffeeshops? You had a good thing going with the clueless outsider act, John, and take it from someone who’ll never have that advantage—you should keep that.”

John gives her a nod. Then, sighing, gets up and gets ahead of her to open the door. She pivots on her heels, smiling, and leans forward to brush a kiss across his cheek as she steps over the threshold. 

He can hear at least two people stop working and then hurriedly restart. Laura Hale’s also out front, chatting with the receptionist, but abruptly breaks that off as her mother comes out. She’s driving Talia around and isn’t happy about it, based on the chatter John overhears. “Jordan, you have a moment?”

“Sure,” Jordan says, dropping the file he’s holding and following John into the office. He shuts the door. “It’s not like a random closed-door meeting isn’t going to make it even _more clear_ that we’re the newest heavies working for the Hales.”

“Is that what they’re saying?” John says absently, dropping back into his chair. He boots up his laptop and checks the patrol schedule for the next twenty-four hours, then clicks into his inbox. There’s an email from the mayor’s public-relations person, asking if he’s got a comment for the release yet. “Is Tara out of the hospital yet?”

Jordan doesn’t answer. When John looks up, the man isn’t checking his phone or distracted by something happening in the rest of the station; he’s just standing there and eyeing John as if he’s not quite sure what John is.

“Are you actually worried about that?” John says.

“Well, no, I guess not, since worst comes to worst, it’s not like burning me at the stake will work,” Jordan says after another moment. He pulls out one of the chairs, pauses and looks at it, and then sits down on it as if he’s still not sure whether it’s safe. “It’s just if that was the way we were going to go, I would have worked a lot less hard at convincing everybody I’ve never looked at Facebook or LinkedIn or even Google in my life and knew nothing about them.”

John gives him an incredulous look. 

“I’m just saying I spent a ton of time perfecting my news-less noob act, and now you’re telling me I should’ve just gone with corrupt small-town cop,” Jordan says.

“We’re not corrupt,” John mutters. He hits ‘reply’ and starts to type in something for the PR person, then changes his mind and hits ‘forward’ instead. The morning update said Tara was asking for her phone back and if she sees the email and comes up with something for him, then great. If she doesn’t, then he’ll just nail the mayor for bothering them when they’ve got an officer down. “Last I checked, we’d issued more traffic citations this month than in the last six. Laura Hale got one, Victoria Argent got one.”

Jordan opens his mouth to retort something, then sucks the air back into it instead. He looks at John for a second, then abruptly shakes his head. “Okay—”

“I’m going to head out and try and catch Melissa at the hospital,” John says. “She and I need to talk.”

“Well, I’m not going to disagree,” Jordan says after a long, tense silence. He obviously has more to say, but takes his time doing it, rearranging his legs and then his arms, trying two different positions before he settles on legs straight out, hands folded over his belly. “Braeden’s not answering my messages anymore, so if only so I can have some peace of mind, I support this.”

“Marin’s not paying for her anymore. I told her I’d pick up any tab she gets offered,” John says. He clears out a few more emails and then logs out and pulls out his phone instead. “Anyway, she can’t kill you.”

“No, but she’s made clear she doesn’t mind excruciating eternal life over death, and I’ve already tried that once. Not a fan,” Jordan mutters. He switches position again, pulling his knees in and leaning over them, then exhales like he decided not to turn that into words when they were already halfway out of his mouth. Shakes his head again, then looks up. “John—”

“If Tara’s not checked out yet, go see if she needs a ride. I’m still waiting to hear back on whether anyone wants Marco’s body or not, so the next pick-up won’t be till tomorrow at earliest.” John sends off a text to Stiles, then slouches back to wait for a reply. “If she is, she probably could use somebody to grab groceries for her. It’s been a few days.”

Jordan sighs. “Yeah, and I stocked her yesterday and her boyfriend’s picking her up and I think she’s basically explained as much to Braeden as she can that it wasn’t our slip-up and honestly, John, do you think that’s why Braeden’s so pissed off? They’re second cousins, I don’t think they’re that close.”

“No, I think Braeden thinks Melissa’s going off the deep end,” John says. Stiles pings back within the minute, but he doesn’t actually answer the question John’s asking him. John repeats the text. “So do you.”

“I don’t—” Jordan protests, not smelling remotely believable. He seems to realize that and shuts up, staring at the floor till his pulse slows some. “Well, look, you’re going to talk to her, so hopefully she’s calmed down and is willing to hear you out. I’ll hold things down here, if that’s where this was going.”

“More or less,” John says after a moment. Jordan still isn’t looking at him, but it’s not because the man is trying to lie to him, or just is so beaten down he’ll say anything to end the conversation. 

And when Jordan looks back up, he blinks in surprise at seeing the way John’s looking at him. Even starts to ask what’s the matter, before John puts him off with a mutter about Stiles. “Well, okay, so who’s on the Hales?” Jordan says instead, still blinking.

“Nobody.” Then John looks over again. “They’re still busy trying to figure out how the fact that werewolves and magic are real can give them an angle in all of this. I’m not that worried about it, and I don’t think you should be spending so much time thinking about your cover. Unless you’re getting attached to this town.”

“Nope,” Jordan immediately says. He sits back, frowning, as John gets up, and then belatedly gets to his feet. “I mean, as places go, it’s not the worst one where we’ve committed multiple homicides and then covered them up.”

“Do you want to go on leave?” John says, stopping halfway to the door. “Because look, Blackwood and his pack are gone and Scott’s back on his feet, so if you need a couple days, now’s the time to take any days.”

“Whoa, wait—I’m not really sure how we got here, okay, and if I accidentally poked at something, I’m sorry,” Jordan says, holding his hands up. He’s taller than John, and hellhounds are really not canids—they have the shape but the instincts are more like true demons—but he still hunches over like he’s playing beta. “I’m just trying to figure out where we _are_ , because it’s been a crazy couple days. But I’m still on board here, you know that. You’re the people who got me out of Gerard Argent’s basement, I’m here for you till I see the bones.”

He really doesn’t need to keep bringing that up, John almost tells him, and then John makes himself just stop. Going into a conversation with Melissa like the one they need to have, he’s got to keep his head and ripping Jordan a new one for being confused is really not going to do that for him. 

And anyway, if he’s honest with himself, he’s not sure exactly where the hell they are either. He just has to be the one who still acts like they’re holding it together. “We’re still where we were before—find Rafael, either him or his body. Now that the dust has settled some, Stiles says he got put on a good lead and we might be able to wrap it up. All goes well, we could even roll it together in this clean-up we’re doing for Blackwood. Melissa’s working on that too and that’s probably why she’s been—”

“Okay, I was buying you right up till there,” Jordan says. He pauses, because even if he’s smart enough to pick up on the bullshit, he still has that thing about owing them and feels guilty about pointing it out. “But I know I’m just the back-up here, so I don’t need you to go into it. I just…I just would really like to know that this talk you’re having with her, it’s going to work. Because Talia Hale’s not the only one who’s picking up on it, I hope you know. If we really are almost there and we’re going to pack up soon as graduation hits, I guess it might be okay, but…Scott’s going nuts over this.”

“Scott?” John frowns.

Jordan smells a little embarrassed. “Yeah, he’s been…asking whether we can watch her. He only went back to school because Stiles convinced him that him following her around would be too obvious and if he went, she’d let her guard down about other people doing it.”

“Shit,” John says after a moment. He’d thought he’d been watching for—he’d asked Stiles to check in on Scott, he remembers. Playing right into that, damn it, and his kid…two talks are going to have to happen tonight. “Well, I’m talking to her.”

Then he’s going to leave, but Jordan clears his throat. Looks awkward about it, as if maybe it wasn’t that important after all, but then he takes a deep breath. “One other thing…again, just so I know where we are,” he says, pausing every few words. “You and Talia.”

“Jordan, it keeps her busy,” John says, annoyed. 

“I know, clearly. I’m just…saying, I know what you’ve got on your plate and it’s not going away, no matter how this talk with Melissa goes,” Jordan says. “So if she needs to stay busy, then…maybe we can use the werewolf stuff for that now. Since they know. I still have those binders Stiles put together when we were in Nev—why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I’m glad you’re not volunteering yourself,” John says, grinning.

Jordan blinks. Then blinks again, hard, and his eyes don’t get any less wide. “What—absolutely _not_. I know I could survive a nuclear strike and I still don’t understand why whenever she walks in, you don’t just go out the back door.”

“Because I know what she’s looking for and it’s not killing me,” John says with a snort. “Fine, dig up the binders. I’m not coming back in again tonight so you might even get to try that out. You can handle that, right? If she comes looking for me—”

“I’ll send her a note from the weapons vault letting her know to check your office for reading material, right,” Jordan says, nodding vigorously.

Not ideal, John thinks. But it’ll probably get the job done, and at the moment, that’s all he’s looking for. 

* * *

Of course Melissa thinks it goes back to Claudia, and of course John’s too tired and slow to do anything except tell her it’s not and lose his temper. So they don’t settle anything, not really, but…he can tell she’s starting to crash. Truly crash, not just resting up until he and Stiles and Scott are handling something else so she can put whatever she’s planning into motion.

So he drives her home, and they silently agree to take this up later, when they’re both better-rested, and then he goes to find his son. Stiles has dinner dished up, which means he’s trying to butter John up, and he’s using the leftovers from the food the Argents brought over—John may just end up tasking Jordan to find out what’s going on there—which means that whatever he’s buttering John up for, it’s probably about Scott and Melissa. Sometimes Stiles is so into his symbols and manipulation that he’s worse than a soap opera.

“So anyway, Peter’s sudden interest in natural philosophy aside, I think we were wrong about Gerard being the one who got Rafael,” Stiles says, pushing a sausage chunk around in the juices pooling on his plate. He squishes the chunk with his fork, then pops it into his mouth; John can hear him sucking the juices out before he starts chewing. “My money’s on this David Whittemore guy. Gerard probably just pointed Rafael in this direction, maybe shared a name out of his contacts list, but Whittemore’s the one who did all the work setting Rafael up with a new identity.”

“And Whittemore’s dead?” John asks, cutting up some onions.

Stiles nods and says something garbled through a mouthful of food. Then hunches a little, part-defensive and part-embarrassed, when John sighs and pushes his glass of water towards him. “Um, yeah. Cremated, even. I mean, we should probably still cross-check with the crematorium but I feel reasonably good about that. The sheer number of anecdotes Peter’s got about that one’s probate process has me pretty convinced. He does lie, but not about things that annoy him.”

“Okay, and how’s Scott?” John asks.

“Um, okay,” Stiles says, blinking. He finally swallows the last of his food and then starts scraping up the leftover juice into a single pool on the left side of his plate. “Cora and Allison haven’t been back to school yet, so I think he’s just been able to lie low while everybody speculates about them.”

“Huh. Maybe you should go back too,” John says. Then gets up and takes his plate with him, walking by his suddenly suspicious son. He still has enough grilled veg left on his that he feels bad about dumping it in the trash, and instead gets a container out of one of the cabinets for it. “These food drop-offs are getting weird and Melissa’s going to be too busy trying to find those morgue records to deal with it, so somebody’s got to work on the Argents. Even if it wasn’t Gerard, you know he always ends up leaving some kind of nasty surprise around. I just don’t think we’ve found it yet, which makes me worried.”

Stiles is still eyeing him, John can feel it across his back. “Yeah, agreed,” he says slowly. “Blackwood wasn’t really a classic Gerard surprise, he just ended up being convenient. Honestly, I thought Peter was going to be it, but turns out he hated Whittemore.”

John squeezes out the dish sponge and tosses it back into its little saucer. Then he opens up the dishwasher and sets his plate inside. It’s half-full and he thinks about running the load, since the sausage was delicious but it also was highly-spiced and hand scrubs alone aren’t going to do it for werewolf tongues. But then he backs off, deciding to wait till Melissa’s come down and had her dinner. “Weren’t you saying he basically took over Whittemore’s practice?”

“Well, yeah, but that was years later, and he documented the backstabbing and power players there pretty convincingly. Nobody died. I mean, actually, he and his sister don’t seem to have killed _anybody_ , rumor mill notwithstanding,” Stiles says. He’s kicking at the floor, trying to play along but not quite managing the fidgets. “Unless you’ve found something, with all the time you’ve been spending with Talia?”

“I guess I should be glad you didn’t make a crack about the chances of me finding something with where and how that time’s being spent?” John says dryly, as he turns around.

Stiles doesn’t blush much anymore, but he still twitches. Which is a relief, a tiny, guilty part of John has to admit; it tells him his son might find this run-of-the-mill but still doesn’t find it _okay_ , and so maybe he hasn’t been a complete sociopath of a father, dragging Stiles along with him and Melissa.

“I’m trying to be considerate,” Stiles says after a second. He fiddles with his fork, tracing runes in the juice on his plate, and then wipes them out and picks up his plate as he gets out of his seat. “You know. Since okay, you’ve said it’s fine, and we’re using them like they think they’re using us, and if for once we can just roll with it and not have to fight or threaten people, that might be a nice vacation, at least for us. Although maybe I’ll just top up the de-scenter bottle in your bathroom?”

John instinctively sniffs—he’d thought he’d dabbed on enough in the car—and then catches the little grin lurking around the corners of Stiles’ mouth. “Son.”

“Dad,” Stiles says equably, stepping up next to John at the sink. Then he turns a little too much of his attention to the dish he’s rinsing up. “So, listen, now that I’ve got Peter hooked on our legends of full moons and wolfsbane, I’m thinking we could work it so that he distracts Talia and she’s not always literally banging down your—”

“Wolfsbane?” John says. “You told him about wolfsbane?”

“Not _much_ , just why its blooming season is totally irrelevant,” Stiles says. His shoulders are creeping up towards his ears. “He definitely thinks electricity’s the key. Right before you got home he put ten military-grade tasers in his Amazon cart. And for the record, that one is Whittemore, I had to explain the—”

John sighs, and decides he’s had enough beating around the bush. “I don’t really care, Stiles. I just want to know that you’re not thinking we can turn the Hales.”

Stiles twists sharply around. Then back just as sharply, yelping and juggling the wet dish, trying to keep it from squirting from his fingers into the metal sink walls until John just reaches out and snags it. “What,” Stiles says, blowing out his breath. He immediately sucks in another one, then stares at John. “Wait. What. Where did you even—why would you—look, I know—I know she’s really stressed out and honestly, I think _maybe_ killing three alphas in the same night _might_ be the werewolf psyche equivalent of chugging ‘roids straight from the bottle and we should at least look into it, but whatever Scott’s mom said—”

“She didn’t say anything, Stiles, I just think you’ve been spending a lot of time with Peter Hale lately,” John says. “Not following. Or investigating. With him.”

“I—for all of two days! Because they finally know and instead of trying to shoot us up with rat poison, they’re being reasonable!” Stiles says. Then he grimaces and looks upstairs where the shower’s going. When he lowers his voice, his throat muscles spasm like he’s being strangled. “I’m not _grooming_ , oh, my God. And even if I were, I definitely wouldn’t be all over _Peter_.”

John looks at him.

“I mean, okay, he’s smart and well-connected and apparently doesn’t freak out over the existence of the supernatural—” Stiles’ glower silently asks when John is going to explain how that happened, which John ignores “—and all of that might seem to bode well for future werewolfhood. But also, I did notice the curious lack of moral reservations over pretty much anything outside of his family, which, while superficially attractive, historically hasn’t led to…um…”

Melissa probably isn’t listening in, John decides, watching his son belatedly jerk to a stop and glance up. Scott might be, but no matter how hellbent he is on his self-assigned rescue missions, Scott doesn’t have a lot of illusions left about his mother. And Stiles…reminds John a lot of his mother at times like these, when he’s trying so hard to show that he’s learned all the lessons and then some, and then doesn’t realize what he’s actually telling John about _which_ lessons those are.

Maybe it’s a born werewolf thing, John thinks idly. He’s never forgotten the first time Claudia looked up at him blankly and asked why he was thanking her so much for just protecting them. “I get it, son,” John says quietly. Then, while Stiles is blowing his breath out, he reaches over and turns off the sink tap. “But honestly, I wasn’t looking at it that way so much as…I know we haven’t really sat down and talked about what it means that you and Scott are both alphas now.”

Surprise plus something else, something much older and wearier, flickers across Stiles’ face. “Is this the werewolf birds-and-bees talk?” Stiles mutters. He picks up a towel to dry his hands, not looking at John. “Because listen, that—Derek was not my best moment, I know that. And I’m really sorry you’re having to bring it up, because I’m old enough—I know what the bite means. I wasn’t ever going to give it to him, I just was mad and the way he’s around Scott gets on my nerves and—and anyway, I didn’t actually get carried away, Dad.”

“I know,” John says. “But—”

“And I am _way_ more on the ball around Peter, let me tell you,” Stiles says, glancing over now as he warms to his subject. “Oh, my God. He’s so uppity already, he doesn’t need super-senses and super-strength added to that. If I turned him into a werewolf, he’d probably try to take over the pack the moment we tell him his family drama’s gotta wait till we’re done with ours.”

“Well, that was actually where I was going,” John says, shutting the dishwasher. “I’m not saying never do it to anyone, just…I don’t think now’s the best time. This lead we have—”

“It’s good. I know we’re just now digging in, but I just—I can feel it. And I know, Dad. I haven’t forgotten why we’re here,” Stiles says earnestly. “I’m not going to get distracted. I mean, okay, I might have indulged in some sarcasm wars with Peter, but that’s all done, I promise. He’s just business, same as you and his sister.”

John grimaces and Stiles frowns. Pays attention. It’s never that John thinks Stiles is not doing that, it’s just…not Stiles’ fault that all he’s got to work with is what John can give him. “I don’t want you to think of them like that either,” John says after a moment. “I know I’ve said things like that before, but…they’ve got their own things going on too, and they’re too smart to just let our problems take over their lives.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m watching out for that, the cooperation notwithstanding,” Stiles says. He offers John the towel, and when John shakes his head, shrugs and uses it to mop up some of the water that’s dripped over the counter. “It’s okay, Dad. Sure, this town’s got a little more drama than some of the others we’ve been to, but I think that just means we’re getting close. We still have this. I’m keeping an eye on Scott and you’re helping his mom, and we’re gonna do this. I can feel it.”

They’re still not exactly on the same page—Stiles is listening but he’s not hearing what John wants to say. But John is tired, and can’t pinpoint the words that are sending his son astray, and Stiles…is just working too hard. And he doesn’t have to, but if John tries to stop him, he knows he’ll just lose all control over his son because Stiles cares too much to give up.

He’ll have to take this up later, when there’s less sloshing around in his head. “Start going back to school while you’re at it,” he finally says. “And no arguing—I know what you’ve been telling Scott about that, but he’s already got his mom running away from him. He needs somebody there to talk to.”

“Whoa—okay,” Stiles says, blinking hard. Then he tries to make as if he wasn’t really that surprised John would be so blunt about it. “I mean, on it, yeah. And, um, Dad, so…not that I really buy Marin’s theories about, well, anything, but this whole thing about killing too many alphas in one night…”

“Oh, that’s not the problem,” John mutters, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t mind the druids as much as Melissa or Stiles do—he still talks with a couple who knew Claudia’s old Emissary—but they’re too focused on magical causes sometimes for his taste. Just because magic exists doesn’t mean plain human problems go away. “She’s—it’s just that we _are_ close, I think. Rafael was a real piece of work.”

“Scott still doesn’t really talk about it,” Stiles mutters, and for a second he looks the way John has felt about Melissa these past few days, deep down under the anger he was using as cover. Sad and worried and fearful that things are too far gone. Then he rolls back his shoulders and looks determined. “Well, being an active listener, that I can do. But, um, Dad—we were scheduled to meet at Peter’s office tomorrow just to go over the last of the boxes, and I don’t really think we want to leave him there alone with actual functional grimoires. I think he could figure them out.”

“Fine,” John finally says, exhaling. Still not the best solution, but Stiles has been trying to keep Scott safe for years and John’s at least more familiar with that problem than whatever interest Peter Hale is sparking. “One more day, then you go back to school. Deal?”

“Deal,” Stiles says.

* * *

The next morning, when John comes down for breakfast, Scott lets him know that Melissa’s going to pick him up for lunch. That’s a good sign, John thinks, and goes to the station with a slightly lighter heart.

Then at lunchtime, Cora Hale bursts into John’s office, Jordan chasing her, and interrupts John’s call with the mayor. “You gotta go, they’re tearing up the hospital,” she gasps.

Thankfully, John had hung up the second he realized it was a Hale coming his way. “What—”

“Look, Mom didn’t trust you to just talk Scott’s mom out of being a crusading psycho so she had Laura tailing her and then a dragon showed up in the morgue,” Cora spits out. She drops her hands onto John’s desk, catching her breath, and then looks up at John. “A _dragon_. Tried to eat them. Is this not a big deal or something?”

Behind her, Jordan signals to ask whether he needs to go in the weapons-vault direction. John shakes his head and gets up. “No, take her home, I’ll just take my car instead of a squad car.”

Jordan does not think this is a good plan, but before he can translate that expression into words, John’s out of the office.

As it turns out, it’s not a dragon, and so John doesn’t actually need the firepower he keeps in his trunk. It is, however, a kanima, and Melissa got venom in her at some point during the fight, so the real mess turns out to be at John’s rental house, where Chris and Victoria Argent are in the living room, Derek Hale’s in his laundry room, and Allison’s upstairs trying to talk to Scott. Stiles pops out of the kitchen while John’s still weighing up his choices, so John pushes him in the direction of the adult Argents, warning him to not tease Derek, and goes to find Scott.

“Mom’s okay,” Scott says, looking as if he’s been run over and then ground into a field of wolfsbane. When John stares at him, he tries to smile and then waves his hand nervously towards the downstairs. “I’m sorry about all the…I’m not really sure what’s going on, but they said they were trying to help Mom. She just had a dose of Nine Herbs, so if you want to talk to her, you might want to give it a few minutes.”

“My parents _are_ trying to help,” Allison says from behind Scott. She’s holding a glass of water and keeps edging towards his elbow as if the idea is to help him stand up to John. “Dad said he shot a giant killer lizard? I thought you’d gotten rid of all of the people trying to kill you.”

“That’s not exactly—Blackwood’s gone, and the kanima’s a guardian, it isn’t out to kill you unless you’ve broken into whatever it’s trying to protect,” Scott says, turning around. When she tries to give him the glass of water, he pulls his hand back to his chest. “So your family’s safe. I’m sorry you got dragged into this again, but—”

“But Dad went over there on _purpose_ because he wants to give your mom her stuff back, and we’re not asking all of this stuff because we’re blaming you,” Allison says, sounding annoyed enough that this must be the middle of their argument. “We’re just trying to find out what’s going on.”

“Scott, can I talk to you for a second?” John says.

“Um, sure,” Scott says, looking both grateful and worried for the interruption. 

John stays put and stares at Allison, who finally gets the point and goes out into the hall. She’s not angry about it, but she gives Scott a backwards look as she goes and he avoids that, wincing in the other direction. That just makes her smell determined, rather than sad, and she makes a little point of setting the glass of water on a table as she steps out. She also closes the door behind her.

“I think she’s just…worried about her parents,” Scott says. “They keep coming over.”

“Sit down,” John says.

Scott looks up, rubbing at the side of his face, as if he’s not quite sure what John just said. Then he starts and tries to get around John to the door. “Stiles said they just locked the body in the morgue and somebody was going to call you but it sounded like it was a full-grown one so—”

“Yeah, I’ve already been over and the body’s secure,” John says, catching Scott in one arm and pushing him back. “We’ll figure out something.”

“Oh. Oh, good,” Scott says. He stares up at John, his face that kind of slack you only get when you’re exhausted beyond plain sleep to fix, and then he starts again. “Stiles! Stiles said it got called up because somebody set it to guard Rafael’s body, and he was going to—”

“He can do the research just fine by himself,” John says. He pushes Scott back a second time, hard enough to propel him backwards till he’s nearly up against the bed, and then looks him in the eye. “You need to lie down, Scott.”

As usual, the kid finds the energy to be stubborn even though he can barely keep his balance. “But Mom—and if Dad—if he’s really dead—”

“If he really is, then you need to rest up now because when we open up that grave, you’re going to have to be firing on all engines for your mother. All right?” John says. He’s putting a little alpha into his voice, not because he thinks that really carries weight with Scott but because he just wants it to cut through whatever thoughts are swirling around Scott’s head. “Lie down, Scott. Your mom’s home and we’ll figure out what’s next.”

“But—the Argents are here, and so’s Derek,” Scott says weakly. He does sit down on the bed, pushing both hands into his hair, but then he looks up at John as if this is honestly still an argument. “That isn’t even really what you were—”

“Scott, if I’m going to complain about having to do things that aren’t my job, that’s going to be between me and your mother. So just lie down,” John says. “It’s my house anyway, if anyone’s going to be kicking them out, it should be me.”

Wrong tack to take, from the way Scott immediately stiffens up. “I don’t think they’re after us. I think they really do just want to know what’s going on.”

“Look, okay, I’m not actually going to kick them out,” John says, just swallowing back his irritation. Scott really isn’t the one causing it, but God, sometimes he wishes the kid would just _give up_. “I’m just going to sit down and figure out what’s going on with everybody, and then talk to your mom, when she’s up to it, and in the meantime you look like shit.”

“I do?” Scott says. “I wasn’t even part of the fight, I just saw Mom—saw her after—”

Yeah, John can tell. But the more he tries to buffalo Scott, the more Scott’s just going to stand up to it. He keeps his breathing slow and works on smelling as calm as possible. “She’s going to be okay, Scott. You said so yourself.”

Scott stops mid-protest, a look on his face as if he genuinely doesn’t remember that. Him being him, he’s going to try before he calls John a liar, and then he sags on the bed. Runs his hand back through his hair again and his fingers are trembling when he drops his arm. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I think so. She’s okay.”

Jesus Chris. John doesn’t say that, but he’s not that sure he keeps _that_ out of his face as he looks at Scott. He hesitates, thinking he should say something, but…it just feels so finely-balanced he’s afraid in case he tips it the wrong way, and they end up with Scott hurt again and Melissa going around killing people.

So he doesn’t say anything. He does lean forward and put his hand on Scott’s shoulder, and if Scott’s breath hitches, if John can hear a sob at the heart of it—John doesn’t say anything about that either. Just presses down, and then steps out of the room.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if Allison Argent had been waiting for him, given what he’s heard about her and her family from Melissa, but she’s not in the hall. She’s hanging out two doors down, in the non-master bathroom, with Derek Hale, and they both look twitchy when he ducks in.

“Just so you know, my parents aren’t trying to kill you. Any of you. They actually want to help out and make up for whatever my grandfather did,” Allison immediately says. “And when Scott’s mom got here, she looked horrible and they said she was paralyzed, and Scott really wasn’t doing that well—I mean, he was getting things done but if you could’ve seen his face—”

“That lizard thing, whatever it’s called, really beat the shit out of his mom,” Derek says. He’s not nearly as confident as the way he’s holding his head high suggests, smelling a little anxious whenever John moves. “And you know, Stiles kept saying you’ve run into them before and the venom was going to wear off but I really don’t think that was helping Scott much.”

“And Derek’s not trying to kill you either. He helped fight that thing off with my dad so they could get Scott’s mom back,” Allison tags on.

John leans against the jamb. “So what about the rest of his family?”

Allison straightens up, offended on Derek’s behalf, and then can’t quite bring herself to lie so she looks at Derek instead. Who, to his credit, also doesn’t lie. “Mom and Peter aren’t sure about you yet,” he says, hiking his chin up a little more, since that’s apparently how he deals with being embarrassed. “They’re not interested in us _dying_ , which you can’t really blame us for, can you?”

“Guess not,” John says.

Derek doesn’t quite know how to take that, and retreats into a scowl, eyeing John. Allison reaches towards his elbow and even though she doesn’t actually touch him and he isn’t looking down, they’re already far enough along that his arm moves towards her fingers.

“I think Laura’s mad Scott’s mom lied to her, but I don’t know anything besides that,” Derek finally adds, with a noncommittal shrug. “And Cora’s still worried she isn’t going to get to graduate from high school.”

“That also sounds fair,” John says.

For a second Derek thinks about just shouldering past and leaving; it’s in the way his eyes flick past John to the hall. Then he draws himself up, and this time Allison does put her hand on him, on the back of his elbow. “And I’d really like it if I never had to let your son anywhere near my car again.”

“Shit,” John says, wincing. Then he rouses himself and looks at the puzzled, wary young man in front of him. “Listen, you lay a finger on Stiles and I’ll kill you, but if he ever does that to you again, let me know and I’ll make sure you two aren’t in the same town.”

“Wow,” Allison says, while Derek just stares as if he’s suddenly unclear as to what language John is speaking. “So that’s not a werewolf thing?”

“No, it’s not,” John says sharply. Then makes himself take a breath, seeing how they both tense up. He doesn’t think his eyes reddened but he did hear a little wolf in his words and they obviously did as well. “We’re not that way—we try not to be that way. What we can do, that’s just…extras. It doesn’t make us who we are.”

“Right,” Derek says slowly. He shifts his weight, then rolls his shoulders. “Well, look, Stiles is just a pain in the—anyway, Scott…is he any better?”

John raises his brows and Derek just looks annoyed that John would even question why he’s asking that. Not a hint of defensiveness anywhere, face or stance or scent.

“You didn’t see him earlier,” Derek says. “And you know, Stiles can be annoying as hell but—my big problem with him was he wasn’t really helping. He was trying, but he just wasn’t…helping.”

“Scott’s supposed to be taking a nap,” John says after a moment’s consideration. “He needs to rest up. I think he’s been worrying about his mother too much.”

Which is a lie, but neither Derek or Allison know enough yet to call him on it. They think it makes sense, and nod together. Then Derek glances down the hall, towards the bedroom where Scott is, while Allison gathers herself up and is going to ask John something.

“Just don’t get him worked up any more than he is,” John says, instead of letting her.

Maybe leaving Scott to those two isn’t the best idea, in the long term—if they’re not in shape to incorporate any more pack members, they damn well shouldn’t be putting down any roots, period. But what they’d all been doing before to hold them together is breaking down, and John doesn’t have anything else to push into the gap. 

He can’t ask Stiles to watch Scott anymore, he thinks as he walks into his home office and finds his son buried up to the waist in printouts and books and two laptops he doesn’t even recognize, alongside the one he does. If Jordan complains about getting stuck with cleaning up the kanima and the morgue, John’s going to kill him, hellhound or no hellhound.

“Hey, Dad,” Stiles mutters, sifting through a stack of diagrams. He pounces on one and then wiggles through the sea of papers like an otter till suddenly he surfaces a pen. Then he pulls back into a knot of limbs, scribbling frantically. “Okay, so I think I’ve—”

John kicks at some papers to make some space. Which he gets, it’s just the size of a postage stamp. He kicks again and Stiles’ head comes up, and then he digs in with his toe and corkscrews around till he can get his whole foot under the stack and Stiles screeches something about his research and comes scrambling over, and John can bend over and pick him up by the waist and haul him out of there.

He gets the impression they pass Victoria Argent in the hall—she’s holding something that’s not a weapon, which is all he cares about right now—and then he walks into the living room and drops Stiles on the couch, ducking the flailing leg. He steps back and his hip brushes against the armchair, and even though it’s just a light touch, it makes him suddenly want to lie down and sleep.

He can’t do that, but he does sit down, and he does it in an odd enough way that Stiles stops mid-rant and looks at him. “Dad?” he finally says, voice surprisingly thin. “Dad? Are you—did something happen—”

“Not to me.” John leans his elbows on his thighs and watches his hands hang between his knees. His head feels like it’s full of lead and just wants to tip down between them, but he can’t let himself. “I went to the morgue, put Jordan on it. Is that where Rafael’s buried?”

“Um. No, I don’t…think so. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I think that was just where the guardian spell was anchored. Which was actually a smart way to still keep the file there but make sure nobody was ever going to pull it,” Stiles says. He still sounds wary, and when John looks up, Stiles is peering at him while fiddling with one sleeve as if—

John closes his eyes. “I wasn’t in a fight, kid. Don’t stab me with any Nine Herbs, it’d just be a waste.”

“Well, okay, it’s just…you don’t look great,” Stiles says. He’s quiet for a moment, and then takes a deep breath. It’s a little uneven. “And, you know, I’m gonna step up so I’m not trying to just be a backseat driver who never actually pulls his weight, but since Melissa’s still down and Scott’s—also not great—if you’re gonna collapse—”

“I’m not collapsing, Stiles,” John says, opening his eyes.

“Oh. Oh, good. Because like I said, I can rep for the pack if that’s where we’re at but just right now is _kind_ of crazy?” Stiles says, his voice getting thin again. “I mean, unless I get Jordan.”

“You don’t actually want Jordan, you just like it when he catches on fire,” John points out.

Stiles shrugs and grins, and he’s working hard to make both happen. “I own my pyro tendencies.”

John looks at him for a few seconds. Then, as Stiles tries to stammer something about how the kanima had probably gotten into the hospital, John forces himself to get up, cross the yard over to his son, and then sit down next to Stiles. When his son asks him what he’s doing, John wraps one arm around him. Doesn’t look over, just holds it there till Stiles’ question peters off and Stiles takes that one, hiccupping breath before suddenly folding into his side, face crushing into John’s shoulder.

No tears, they’re both too worn out for that. But still, as the seconds turn into minutes and Stiles just keeps heaving those big, dragging breaths, it’s clear to John that they needed to stop just the same. This needed to come out.

“I feel like we fucked up somewhere,” Stiles finally mumbles. He twists his forehead against John’s shoulder, getting his mouth clear of John’s shirt. “I don’t know why—we’re alive, we’re on the right track, we’re a _way better_ Alpha Pack, since we don’t have to murder every other werewolf in town to make ourselves feel better.”

“But we did kill them,” John says.

Stiles flicks John’s leg. “That was self-defense. It wasn’t acting out. Well—”

John hums.

“The need to do it was self-defense. The actual method of execution, okay…and I know this isn’t really running the way we talked about. I know you don’t like how it’s happening, and I know I’m letting you down,” Stiles says.

“Stiles—”

“Look, Dad, you don’t have to lie about it. I know you’ve been working overtime to just keep it going—I _know_ , okay? I can see.” When John tightens his arm, Stiles twists slightly like he might try and dip out of it, and then he suddenly presses harder into John’s side. His voice gets muffled again, but not so much that John has to rely on smell to tell how upset he is. “And if you’re getting to the point where you wonder whether being the only sane one’s really worth it—why you’re even bothering to try and cover up for the rest of us—I get that, you know.”

The first time John tries to answer that, nothing comes out. He has to swallow a few times before his voice works, and even then, it sounds rough. “Listen. You’re my kid, I’m not ever going to get tired of protecting you. You understand? No—do you hear me? Don’t smartass me, Mieczyslaw.”

“Wow. Serious business,” Stiles says after a long moment. His voice is still shaky, but he sounds calmer. He’s not pressing into John’s side like he thinks this is his last chance.

“Yeah, well…I get disturbed when I think you’re forgetting what I’ve told you over and over, but that doesn’t keep you from being my son,” John says. He listens to the way Stiles’ heartbeat is smoothing out, and for a second, he thinks he might have this. But that’s not all of it, and he wouldn’t be living up to his promises if he stopped here. “But I get worried. I don’t know what’s going on, I’ll be honest with you, but it just feels like we’re not…what you did with Derek, Stiles, that’s not you.”

“I know. I know. And I know it’s even worse that it wasn’t even really about him, it’s—I don’t know how to get through to Scott these days, Dad,” Stiles says in a sudden rush. He pushes up against John’s arm, and when John realizes his son’s just trying to raise his head, he moves that so Stiles can straighten up and look at him. “I’m trying to help him, but he’s not…I don’t think he even thinks we can help anymore. And you know him, he’s always been the one who thinks just a little help will fix the whole world. He’s still trying to fix it, but he’s not working with me.”

The ‘it’ Stiles is referring to isn’t the world and they both know it. “I haven’t seen Melissa like this in a very long time,” John finally admits. He looks at the far end of the room, and then up at the ceiling—Scott’s talking to someone. Derek, then Allison. But they’re…he’s drinking water, and then their voices go softer, so at least he’s not getting upset. “A very long time. Not since right after your mother died.”

“Well, you snapped her out of it back then, didn’t you?” Stiles says, nudging John with his shoulder.

He’s trying, for John, and John can’t help but smile at it. But it’s a pretty weak smile, because also John can’t lie to his kid. “Yeah, but if I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure I can do it again. We’re not giving up, Stiles, I’m not saying that, but…”

“I think we just need to end this already. I think they need closure,” Stiles says abruptly. Too quickly—he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is John. “I mean, at least we know for sure Scott’s dad is dead.”

“You’re sure,” John says.

Stiles bites his lip, then twists his head around so he’s looking John in the eye. “Yeah, I am. I’ve checked the kanima binding spell over and it only makes sense if it’s guarding a grave. I’m sure about that much. I might not have figured out _where_ it is, or who put a kanima on it, but I’m sure.”

“Did you tell Scott or his mom that?” John asks.

“I told Scott, but I’m not sure he was listening. I mean, his mom was paralyzed, you know,” Stiles says, with a half-hearted attempt at a shrug. “Haven’t tried to tell Melissa yet.”

“All right, I’ll tell her when she’s up,” John says. Then shakes his head when Stiles tries to say something. “No, I’ll handle it. You…I know you’re not going to listen when I say you need to take a break, but at least eat something while you’re doing all that research.”

“I already did, Dad. Allison’s mom brought more food,” Stiles says. He prods John. “Homemade ravioli, with duck and mushroom filling. And don’t look like that, it was either eat it or deal with her weird strong-arming mother-hen act.”

Which reminds John—he listens for a second, then pinpoints Chris and Victoria on the second floor. They’re in the bathroom where Allison and Derek had been, complaining about not being able to find any first-aid supplies. For a second John frowns, because there should be some under the sink, and then he just gives himself a shake and gets up.

“All right, I’m going to check in with Jordan and then deal with our guests,” John says. “Try to come back here if you need to pass out, all right?”

“Okay, Dad,” Stiles says. “Long as you go eat something before you come yell about my workaholic tendencies again.”

“Deal,” John says.


	2. Chapter 2

John means to just give Jordan a quick call and then go make the Argents have dinner with him, and maybe figure out what they’re up to, but Jordan ends up keeping him on the phone for almost an hour because Laura Hale wants to talk about exactly how they’re getting the body out of the morgue. Because apparently, she wants to help.

 _“I’m still mad at Melissa, but I don’t want her or you to get dragged off to some black-ops lab to get chopped up,”_ is how Laura explains it, sounding tired. _“Besides, this’ll go a lot faster if you let me deal with the hospital admin, and if I’m doing that, you need to tell me what you’re doing. Don’t make me guess.”_

When John actually does, she goes silent for a full minute before thanking him in an odd voice. Jordan comes back on later and explains that Laura had muttered something about easier to deal with than her mom, even if they’re all liars. _“Want me to keep an eye on her?”_ he finishes.

“Is she leaving?” John says, realizing how long it’s been. He concentrates, and then blinks hard at the number of heartbeats in the master bedroom, and where exactly they seem to be clustered. Then he swings out of the kitchen and heads upstairs. “If not, I don’t think you need to rush about it. She’s helping her mom out and I can always talk to Talia about it.”

 _“You’re really testing out that werewolf healing,”_ Jordan says. _“Then again, I guess you don’t have to worry about doing any work there.”_

“Jordan, shut up,” John says, and then he hangs up and goes to ask Melissa what the hell is going on now.

Except he doesn’t get to, because Talia Hale announces that her brother’s missing and Scott suddenly takes off like he knows why, so Melissa _follows_ him and Stiles is tossing magic reference books all over the place and when Victoria bangs a chair against the kitchen floor, John shifts before he can help himself.

Chris hisses and Talia falters mid-demand, while Victoria smells alarmed but puts the chair down with impressively steady hands. “Can we explain what happened and where they went, and why?” John asks, shifting back.

“Scott got a call from someone. It wasn’t that long but he went _white_ and then he said ‘no, I’ll come, you don’t have to do this’ and then he just jumped out the window,” Allison says. She produces Scott’s phone and tosses it to John, who unlocks it. “I don’t know who it was, but—”

“It was his dad,” Stiles says. He looks around the room, then drops into the chair Victoria had used and spreads sheets of paper over the kitchen table. He’s moving so quick that he tears the corner off one by accident and snarls, showing fang, as he slaps at it. “Godda—so his dad’s dead. But his dad’s still around in the spirit, because that kanima spell only gets used for guarding the restless dead, and now the kanima’s gone and—”

“Why would my brother be involved?” Talia says sharply. She’s staring intently at Stiles. “Because he is. He was looking up more about David Whittemore’s dealings, trying to figure out what else might have been supernatural.”

The Recent Calls list on Scott’s phone shows Peter Hale’s number at the top. “Did he know anything about magic before?”

“ _No_ ,” Talia says, whipping around on John. “No, we didn’t know a damn thing and if you’ve been withholding something that got Peter—”

“It wasn’t Dad, it was me, okay? I had this theory, and I leaked it to Peter because I figured he’d keep at it. I mean, just that he’d keep researching it, not that—I didn’t think there’d be a _trigger_ ,” Stiles says, frantically rearranging his papers. He’s trying to create some sort of huge diagram—a magic circle, something like that. “The books—what they were about, the real ones—if you were gonna kill yourself, or get somebody to do it for you, but then you come back so magic location spells can’t find you anymore, and—”

“So it wasn’t just the kanima dying,” John says. “Peter set off something in the books, is that what you’re saying?”

Stiles nods. “Yeah, I think so.”

“So that all means that what, Scott’s dad possessed Peter?” Derek, of all people, blurts out. “That can work?”

“Not for that long,” John says, just as Talia rears back for another go at him. “He’s not a blood relation and he didn’t know Peter before, right? No real connection. He wouldn’t be able to hold onto Peter long enough to do much.”

“But long enough for a phone call. Because he needs a blood relative to come back for good,” Talia says. She settles back. She’s still furious but she’s thinking. “How does that happen?”

“Couple different ways, but they all involve a lot of blood,” John says. 

Talia nods tightly. “Right. And Peter was digging into Whittemore’s files, and Whittemore was supposed to set this up for Scott’s father but double-crossed him. So now he’s got Peter and he needs to get Scott to come to him so he can finish coming back, _so_ he’s probably threatening to kill Peter. Am I correct?”

Derek sucks his breath. Stays quiet when his mother looks over at him, but the moment she looks away, he tugs at Allison’s arm. Chris notices, and moves over towards them.

“Um…yeah, that would be how he works. Worked. Ugh, I just—” Stiles only sounds distracted, but when he puts his hands to the side of his face, his nails leave deep red marks as they drag down his skin “—where the hell _is_ it?”

“John,” Talia says, very calmly. “Tell me where Scott and Melissa went.”

“We’re trying to find out,” John says, with one eye still on Stiles. His gut feels like it’s been ripped out but he can’t dwell on that right now. He can—he can call Jordan, since Tara can just handle the station from her desk. Jordan and Braeden, if she hasn’t gotten too far off, and—

“ _Tell me_ ,” Talia says, suddenly nose-to-nose with John, so angry she’s vibrating with it. “You have magic and you have werewolf—werewolf abilities, and if you can’t tell me—”

“Mom. _Mom_ ,” Derek snaps. When she pivots to face him, he flinches, but then he nods at Stiles. “I think he’s—”

Stiles is holding his phone over the diagram he’s drawn. “Locked,” he says. “Got an address. It’s…it’s in your backyard?”

Talia stares at Stiles. Then, just as John’s going to yank her away because of how that stare is making his skin prickle, she twists on her heel and stalks out. And keeps going, and going, and walks completely out of the house.

“Shit,” Derek breathes, and then he’s got his phone to his ear. “C’mon, Cora, pick up for—why are you all still here? Go after her! She’s going to kill that guy!”

“Well, that’s the idea,” Stiles mutters, but he’s already bundling up his things. He shoves them to the side of the table, spins around to face John, and then snaps his fingers. “Hang on, I gotta grab my bag, meet you outside.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Derek mutters, and then the other end gets picked up. “Where are—shut up, just tell me. This psycho has Peter and Mom’s—yeah. Oh, good, stay there. Don’t go home, and tell Laura.”

“John,” Victoria says.

“What?” John snaps, halfway out of the kitchen. He’s still trying to figure out how many bodies he can get, but Talia wasn’t ever going to be one of them and now he has to account for her too.

When he looks over, Chris is back by Victoria, and they’re both checking something in her purse. Chris looks up before John can do more than grit his teeth at their wasting his time. “What do you need?” he asks. “I have another gun in the car, if that works on this—”

“It doesn’t. Just stay here,” John mutters.

“But what about Scott? Or his mom?” Allison says, stepping forward. “If they—”

“Yeah, but you don’t know what to do there and honestly, I’m not sure what we’re going to get when we show up either,” John says. He hears Stiles whisk back down the stairs, then senses all of the Argents trying to do something: move towards him, raise a hand, say something. “Listen, stay here. Get things ready for when we come back, I don’t think Melissa or Scott will be in great shape. I—call the station, ask for Tara, tell her I told you we’re running low on Nine Herbs. I already have to get Talia, don’t add to that. Okay?”

Allison’s going to argue, but her mom grabs her shoulder and her dad gives John a nod. Not that Chris likes it either, but at least he and Victoria seem to be practical about this. Or maybe they’re just waiting till John goes to do something stupid, he can’t tell, and he doesn’t have the time to worry about it. He’s got to go.

* * *

John and Stiles go separately, with Stiles shifted out and trying to follow Scott and Melissa’s tracks while John takes Talia’s car—Talia apparently took her son’s—and pauses to pick up Jordan en route. Braeden isn’t anywhere where she can get to Beacon Hills within the next twenty-four hours, but Marin agrees to come within two and to help with whatever exorcism or banishing spell they’ll have to do.

“That still leaves us pretty light on actual fighting bodies,” Jordan mutters, as he wrenches the car off to the side of the road to park. He turns off the engine and then bends down to take off his shoes. “Stiles say anything about what we might be up against?”

“Just that Rafael’s still looking for a permanent body.” John gets rid of his shoes too, and also his belt and shirt. He does keep his gun, and debates over which bullets to load before he finally passes it to Jordan. “Not sure if that means he doesn’t really have his own anymore, or if it’s just—”

“Gross?” Jordan volunteers, grimacing. He takes John’s gun and swaps out the bullets. Then taps his own gun, which is still strapped to his hip, when he catches John sniffing. “Already have wolfsbane here, I figure just go with regular soft-point till I can tell if the bits that come off are going to infect anybody.”

John pushes his door open. “Infect?”

“Rage zombies?” Jordan says. “Stiles didn’t make you watch those yet?”

That doesn’t require an answer, as far as John is concerned. He gets out of the car, listens, and then heads off into the woods to the right. They’re still facing the front of the house, and the trees come up nearly to it, with only a narrow strip of cleared space holding them off. The house itself is dark, no apparent life in it. No other cars are there, so Talia must still be driving over.

After the grass ends, the next five to ten yards off from the house have had the underbrush thinned out, so it’s relatively easy to move through and in a couple minutes John and Jordan have gotten around to the side. John still doesn’t see anyone—he hadn’t heard anyone either, so that matches up. Still not comforting. Stiles had said ‘the backyard,’ but John can see nearly all of the grassy area now, and if they were in the trees, he should be able to hear that.

Jordan coughs and John turns around. The other man’s staring into the woods to the left of the house’s back, and then he points at an unevenness where the brush picks up again, showing that somebody’s recently broken through it. John nods and points, and Jordan drops back to cover him as he shifts to four-legged and starts to work his way up.

When he gets closer, he sees why there weren’t any tracks leading up to the house: they’d come in from the other direction, which isn’t the most direct route from his rental and which would have put them through some of the roughest terrain that the preserve has to offer. Granted, the preserve’s no national monument, but it’s still enough that John starts to run into scraps of clothes impaled on bushes and bloodscent here and there. Nothing bad, just scrapes and minor cuts, but telling.

But, he thinks, somebody did come from the house’s direction.

He keeps his head down as he works his way along. It isn’t long before he hears a heartbeat, and, mindful of what they’re dealing with—and the kind of personality Rafael had had _before_ somebody had locked up his ghost and dropped an angry lizard-man on top—he makes himself hold back till he’s sure it’s not just his imagination, or a heartbeat he doesn’t care about. It’s a little late for random joggers and this is off the best trails, but…

The heartbeat fades out. He pauses, then snakes through a particularly tangled patch of weeds and listens again. This time, he hears two heartbeats—one sluggish, the other slowing. John inhales deeply to try and pick up a scent, only for both heartbeats to abruptly vanish.

This time, John can’t help nervously pawing at the ground. It’s not right for a sudden death, that would’ve cut off, not just _vanish_ , but he doesn’t like this.

Light suddenly streams into the woods. John jerks around, automatically backing behind the nearest brush, and sees that all the windows of the house are blazing, as if everything’s been turned on. He hears footsteps running towards it—that’s Jordan—and then more running footsteps, about twenty yards away. He recognizes those, and barks once, but Melissa doesn’t acknowledge him before her steps are swallowed up in a horrendous rumbling crashing sound.

A plume of dirt shoots up into the air, while the ground trembles under John’s paws. He immediately gets what’s going on, and, dodging falling debris here and there, follows Melissa into the caved-in tunnel.

He hadn’t thought the old drainage works led this close to the Hale house, but apparently, they do, and they’re older than the World War II-era concrete tunnels he’s been in before. What’s left of the tunnel is held up by creaking wooden supports, which pop and groan as John chases after Melissa. He doesn’t give them more than a couple minutes and he does his best to catch up to her—she’s faster than him but the cramped, twisting space doesn’t give her much room to go flat out, and he almost—

—flash of light—

—she’s gone. He skids up to the wall, ends up climbing a few inches of it, twisting around and then he sees her in an offshoot, jaws locked into a grey, shaking hunk of something. It’s strong enough to flip her, though she rolls away, snarling and lashing out, before her back really lands. The lights that’d blinded John, electric miner’s lights, swing wildly from where they’ve been pinned overhead, and John catches a shadow against the other wall. He follows it down to a slumped, dirty, ashen-faced Peter Hale, who’s unable to get up but who’s trying very hard to—Peter’s stuck on the edge of a deep trench, with one leg still in it.

“Stiles?” he hisses, desperate and afraid and wild in the way that somebody guessing in the dark is.

John shakes his head, then jumps the trench and is over by Peter as the man twists around, shoving at him with cuffed hands—the chain goes to something in the hole. Easy enough to snap it, and then John shoves Peter off towards the wall as he looks into the hole.

Rafael stares up at him.

He should be more rotten, is all John can think at first. The man’s smeared with dirt, but his skin looks healthy under it, his hair has enough shine to catch the light. His eyes are wide-open, flecks of dirt sticking to the whites, and he’s just lying down there in the bottom of the ditch like he’s waiting for somebody to give him a hand up.

“Scott—Scott!” comes a shout from further down the tunnel. Then Stiles bursts in from the opposite end. He nearly stumbles over Melissa, who’s growling and hunching herself up against the grey thing moving slowly to its feet before them. His head goes up, he sees John, and then he lunges forward, grabbing Melissa. “No, no, _stop_ , that’s _Scott_ —”

The grey thing unfolds itself into a huge alpha, taking up so much of the tunnel that John can barely make out Melissa and Stiles. It doesn’t look like Scott—even as an alpha, he’s still on the lanky side. It _does_ look exactly like Rafael’s old alpha form.

Melissa roars and the tunnel shakes, sending Peter down onto his knee and then almost into the trench. John has to shift human to grab him and haul him back; he immediately groans in pain, twisting to get his left side away from John, but then locks his hand around John’s wrist in a convulsive grip. “Don’t—I _saw_ in there with _his_ eyes—” Peter’s hissing.

“Yeah, okay, come on,” John grunts, trying to get him up in a way where John can just carry him and have a hand free.

Peter won’t let go of his wrist, so he can’t. He does get them up on their feet, but then there’s another scream and he looks up and Melissa and Stiles are both wrestling with the Rafael lookalike. Stiles is shouting broken words and trying to jam something into its mouth, but then their teeth close on his forearm and he breaks off with a hurt cry.

John somehow gets across the trench, with Peter. The second he’s over, he wrenches Peter off and pushes the man aside, and then grabs the Rafael lookalike by the throat, choking them till they let go of his son. Stiles falls back, face white as bone, and then lurches back up as blood streams down his front from his arm. “Dad—no, it’s Scott, he’s in Scott, we have to—”

Somebody comes up from the side. John spins around, dragging the lookalike with him and Melissa shoves a plastic bottle into their mouth. They crunch down and she stumbles back, barely saving her fingers, and then they suddenly spasm, throwing their head and shoulders around with such force that John can’t hold onto them anymore. 

The tunnel shakes again. John loses his footing, going down to one knee, and then slides back up against the wall. His arm hits someone—Stiles, eyes rolling up with pain. Cursing, John grabs his son by the arm and then—oh, Stiles is trying to drag Peter along, that’s the extra weight.

“Get back, get back, it’s caving in,” Melissa snarls.

“He’s still—” Peter is trying to say.

Whatever that is, they can figure it out when they’re not buried alive. John yanks him and Stiles along, trying to peer through the dust as the lights start to fall from their hooks. He can smell fresh air, he just has to—

Thankfully, two minutes later he falls out into a basement. Peter thumps down against a nearby piece of furniture and then half-curls, making dazed, pained noises, while John hurriedly drags Stiles up to catch his chin and try and see into his eyes. “Son?”

“Ow…” Stiles’ eyes go from nearly shut to all whites “—Scott!”

Melissa. Shit—John twists around, then freezes as the smell of his son’s blood freshens. He looks down, watching Stiles cradle his savaged arm, and then snaps his head up as Melissa comes stumbling out of the doorway in the wall, a limp body over her shoulder. The way they both hit the ground is _not_ good, but he can hear heartbeats in both of them, and when Melissa finally moves, it’s to press her hands against the body, not to leap at anyone. Thick black lines are streaking up her forearms.

“You forgot him,” Peter is saying. “You forgot him, he _said_ the whole point was to come back—”

“Well, no, he didn’t,” Stiles is saying. “He didn’t, we got him out of Scott—”

“That wasn’t the _point_!” Peter says. He hikes himself up against the chair, sharply enough that even as obviously injured as he is, John immediately moves up to defend Stiles. “The point was _his_ body! He didn’t want Scott’s, he just wanted to pull the alpha out of him so he could take the power, he said—”

Just then, a final series of crashes fills the whole room with dust. Coughing and choking, John gropes till he finds Stiles and then pulls what’s left of his shirt over Stiles’ nose and mouth, trying to shield his lungs. He glimpses Melissa and then hears her telling Scott to just breathe through his mouth, and then Scott cries out. “No—Dad—no, please, if you leave them alone I’ll do it! You can have my—you can be alpha!”

John looks up. There’s still too much dust in the air, but he can make out something in the doorway. Something—someone. Standing there—he starts to growl, pulling Stiles under him, and the person steps forward into the clearing air, one hand nonchalantly waving before his unmarked face.

Rafael opens his mouth, and then his fingers drop. By themselves. 

What—John jerks his eyes up from the severed digits rolling on the ground just in time to see Talia taking another swing at Rafael’s neck as he gracelessly falls to his knees. It’s a hard angle, with him falling and his head flopping on the remaining tendons like that, but she makes it. She sends his head flying nearly back into the doorway, and then she moves over a few inches, letting his body completely land, before raising the machete again and bringing it down on his remaining wrist. And then his ankles.

“Peter,” Talia says, when she finally stops. She’s out of breath, and pushes herself back against the wall beside the doorway. “Peter? Peter—”

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m—good God,” Peter says abruptly, sounding annoyed and then veering into disgust as his eyes drop to the body. He’s breathing hard as well, smelling of incipient shock. “Talia—”

“Did I cut off enough to keep him down?” Talia says. She digs the machete tip into the floor and leans on it, looking at Peter. He’s a little incredulous, and then he nods silently at John and Stiles. “Well?”

“Um, I—maybe?” Stiles says.

Talia stares at him as if that’s not remotely acceptable. When John growls, her eyes flick to him and he thinks a tiny bit of awareness might be showing through the grim determination.

But then Talia pushes herself up and goes off to the corner, and comes back with a sledgehammer that she uses to nail the machete through Rafael’s chest. The machete bends under the blows and more than once she almost smashes her own arm, but she keeps at it till John hears a clear _thunk_ as the blade comes out of Rafael’s back into the floor. “Anything else?” she says.

“Salt, I guess? I mean, probably more undead than werewolf, so…” Then Stiles breaks off, frowning, as Peter kicks at the floor in an obvious and clumsy attempt to get his attention.

“Son, I think you should…we should…” John starts to warn, as Talia goes off to another corner and comes back with a bucket of salt for deicing sidewalks.

He doesn’t like her calm, or the way her heartbeat isn’t wavering. Neither does Peter, who struggles up onto his knees and then gingerly makes his way over to where his sister is shaking the salt out in a circle around Rafael’s body. She’s making little bumps for the hands and feet and John doesn’t like that either.

“Talia,” Peter says. He’s still catching his breath, and is swaying heavily. “Talia, he’s dead.”

“Yes, he is,” Talia says. She pauses, looking at how far the head’s rolled, and then sloshes salt to close the main circle and goes over to the head. After another second, she simply upends the bucket over it.

“Talia,” Peter tries again, his tone slow and careful. He tries to reach for her, then has to grab for a nearby box as his balance goes. The cuffs still on his hands jingle over his pained grunt. “Da—Talia. Listen to me. He’s dead, and I’m not, and I _need_ a doctor.”

John looks over at Melissa, who’s holding Scott so tightly to her that he can’t tell if Scott’s passed out again. She’s lucid, but is clearly measuring up the distance between herself and Talia. Who had looked up when Peter had fallen, but who makes no move to come over.

“I need a doctor,” Peter says, quieter but more forcefully. He slides down against the box, sucking his breath between his teeth, keeping his eyes locked on her. “You killed him. You killed him. You can see that—right there.”

For another second, Talia stares at him. And then a tremor goes through her. Her eyes dart to the body, then to Peter, and all of a sudden her scent floods with shock. “Oh, my God,” she says, and she drops the bucket and rushes over to Peter. “God, Peter—is it internal?”

“No,” says Stiles, and then he flinches back when she whips around to glower at him. He hastily puts up his hands. “No—look, we’d smell it if it was.”

“How comforting—state of my health exposed to everyone,” Peter mutters, as Talia sinks back and concentrates on trying to help him sit up. His head turns towards Talia. “Do think he’s right, but—damn it, ribs, watch those.”

Talia makes an apologetic noise and shifts around, putting her back to John. Relieved, he stands down and then crosses over to check on Melissa and Scott. The boy has passed out again, but he’s breathing regularly and John has unfortunately seen him in worse conditions, so he knows Scott should be on the way to recovery if they can keep him quiet.

Melissa, on the other hand, is almost grey in the face. John reaches for her wrists and she snarls at him. He snarls back. “You can’t drain yourself, goddamn it,” he says, and gives her one more second before he just knocks her off and then takes her place. “Look, I have him. I have him, so—Stiles?”

“I’m trying to call,” Stiles says. “I—Jordan? Hey, we have zombie!Rafael bits and also need at least two ambulances. One’s for Scott…yeah, you heard me right…”

There’s a low moaning noise. Stiles stops and looks over at Melissa, who’s withdrawn with her knees pulled up to hide her face, and then looks at John. His hand is shaking, and John’s starting to smell shock on him too. “Call Derek. Or Allison. Somebody at the house, whoever you can get,” John says, making up his mind. “Have them get our go-bags and meet us at the hospital. I’ll—get a section blocked off or something, I don’t know. Call in a police cordon.”

“Laura will handle that,” Talia says curtly. She’s got Peter’s shirt shoved up and is ripping and tying it around him, trying to create some sort of support brace. She glances over at John and the look in her eyes is…he’s not about to turn his back on her any time soon, but she knows where she is and who she’s with and what’s going on. “Call her, don’t waste the time arguing with me.”

“Go ahead,” John says to Stiles, when he hesitates. “Then call Jordan back. I don’t know where he got to, but he can stop it and come here and watch the body.”

That makes Talia…not quite twitch, but she moves oddly enough that Peter is worried enough to grab at her, talking loudly about how they need to get something better in place than just Laura. She’s only half-listening to him and the alarm grows in his scent as he raises his voice. And then he abruptly stops talking and John looks away from him, back towards Stiles, who’s blinking and holding his hand out.

“So there’s this thing werewolves do,” Stiles says. He wiggles his fingers. “You let me touch and I’ll make it hurt a lot less.”

“No,” Peter says, immediately and sharply.

Stiles was already moving forward but at that he pulls back, startled. Then Talia, who’d also been taken by surprise, slides her arm under Peter’s knees and starts to push him back towards the carpeted side of the basement. “Just make your calls and leave us alone,” she mutters.

“It’s not a trick,” Stiles says after a moment. “I mean, it _is_ a trick, but it’s not a—”

“Whatever it is, I’m not interested,” Peter says. He sucks in his breath as Talia tries to arrange a cushion behind his back, then lets it out very slowly. Then looks up at Stiles. “To be clear: keep it to yourself.”

Talia starts to turn as if to also add something, but by then Stiles has already turned away. He still looks surprised, and as if this is the start of something very worrying, but then his eyes land on Scott and John. He sits down on Scott’s other side, visibly trying to keep his cool, and puts his hand out over Scott’s chest. Pauses and looks at Melissa, who still is knotted up, and then looks at John.

“Go ahead,” John says.

He watches his son take a shaky breath before putting his fingertips carefully on Scott, and then leans forward, bumping the sides of their heads together. Stiles flinches, then gratefully presses back, his breathing finally breaking out into a series of shuddering gasps.

John ends up taking the phone from him and calling Laura Hale. “It’s John Stilinski,” he says. “Your uncle’s hurt and so are my friends. We need help.”

* * *

John rides with Scott and Melissa to the hospital, where Laura has gotten everything arranged: a pair of two-bed rooms at the end of a corridor, on either side of a stairwell that leads down to the least visible part of the back of the hospital. The hall’s been blocked off and John overhears snippets of ‘suspected hazardous chemicals’ and ‘restricted access by police order.’ Very thorough of her, but he doesn’t step back until Marin and her brother suddenly emerge in white doctor’s coats with badges stating they’re visiting specialists.

“We didn’t think there would be time to arrange something with the local vet,” Alan explains, semi-apologetically. “Tara called and said it might be too high-profile to sneak them out right away. And she also said we’d be more useful here than with the body.”

“Yeah, well,” John says, watching Laura Hale and her mother talking to more doctors in the other room. “She was right. Scott lost a lot of blood, and I don’t think Stiles knows exactly what his father did to him. And Melissa’s been hitting the Nine Herbs too much. I don’t think we can deal with them just in the rental.”

Alan looks sympathetic, but before he can say anything, Marin comes out and hisses that she needs him. John follows him in and then slumps in a chair against the wall, watching them do their rituals.

At some point, Stiles comes in to relieve him, telling him Jordan’s asking what to do with Rafael’s body. John goes out into the hall and finds the Argents and Talia’s children all sitting on folding chairs in the hall, circling a folding table with homemade-looking food in Tupperware and some board game. He pauses, then looks down the hall. Somebody’s set up a screen to block them from view, and just beyond them, he can see the boots and hats of _state_ troopers.

John walks over, ignoring Chris Argent’s attempt to get his attention, and looks around the screen. “This Jordan?”

“Sorry, sir?” says the one on the left.

“That’s the deputy’s name,” the one on the right says. “Ms. Hale said to let you know she’d talked to him and it’s all worked out.”

“Okay,” John says slowly. He steps back, pauses, and then turns around. Then walks past the table and keeps on going to the stairs.

Chris wasn’t there anymore anyway, and Victoria was looking in at the room where the McCalls are, though she’d started to turn as John had passed her. But the one who catches him at the stairs is Laura Hale.

“You need to know something,” she blurts out. “Mom killed our dad in the basement.”

John has the door open and his head in the stairwell. He takes a deep breath, and then swings the door further and turns around. Laura’s eyes widen and she takes a wary half-step back, pauses, and then edges forward. She comes up to the threshold, but doesn’t cross until John sighs and steps all the way into the stairwell, and even then, she hedges her bets by keeping one hand on the door handle and holding it slightly open.

“With a machete?” John guesses.

Laura nods tightly. Her eyes narrow and a thread of confusion makes its way into her scent.

“Because he was trying to threaten Peter?” John asks.

“Yeah. Well, him and the rest of us,” Laura says, and then stops, flinching, as if she can’t believe what she just said. But it’s obviously what she came to tell him; she works through it after a few more seconds and shakes her head. “Dad was fucked-up. He left for a while and Mom was just raising us by herself, and then he came back, except she wouldn’t let him come back. So he waited till she wasn’t there but Peter was around—he’d pissed off his roommate or something, and come home to crash without telling Mom.”

So Peter would’ve been in college or law school. John calculates the ages of the rest of them in his head. “And you all helped bury him down there, or something?”

“I guess this all makes sense to you?” Laura says after a second. Her tone’s not exactly challenging, but it is poking at John, trying to figure out if his reaction is the real deal.

“Well, I can see you doing it,” John says. He watches her expression change and then remembers how Melissa used to complain about Laura, saying she wanted to run from her family’s reputation. “Look, I’m a werewolf. You think I haven’t buried people in basements?”

“I have no idea where you bury them, and I don’t want to guess,” Laura snaps. She twists the door handle back and forth, hanging back as if she’s just going to leave, and then she grimaces and straightens up again. “Well, we’re _not_ werewolves, and whatever you’ve heard about us—”

This is taking too long. “Do you think I _care_ ,” John snaps back. “I’m not here to judge, if that’s what you’re ask—”

“I’m not, I’m just trying to tell you—we saw it, all right? We all saw it,” Laura says, and it’s not John she’s snapping at now, not him that’s turning her grip on the door knob white-knuckled. She presses her lips together, then abruptly pulls the door shut and leans against it. “Peter got us down to the basement because the old storm cellar goes out to those tunnels, but Dad got there first and he was going to kill us and Mom made him stop. And you know what, none of us have ever thought that that was a _bad_ thing, okay? You probably think Mom’s going crazy over guilt or something but believe me, it’s not that.”

“I didn’t, actually,” John says after a second. He shrugs off Laura’s incredulous noise. “Not the guilt part, anyway.”

Laura goes back to glaring at him. “She’s not crazy.”

“I didn’t say that either,” John says.

“Well, you don’t say a hell of a lot but I still feel like you think we’re—” Laura twists her head up, pressing the hair back from her face, and then drops it, frustrated “—the thing is that Mom wasn’t _there_. She thought he’d left town. She’d made him leave—she got the sheriff to drive him out and drop him off, and then he came back and she didn’t realize. She wasn’t supposed to come home either, it’s just Peter’s roommate called her and gave her a heads-up he was coming, and she came home for _that_ and found us. You starting to get it?”

“A little,” John says, after thinking about it.

Laura doesn’t believe him. She keeps rumpling her hair towards the back of her head, giving him a hostile stare.

“It’s not that you think she’s crazy either. You just don’t want her to obsess about not being able to be there for you, that’s why you want to leave town. Right?” John adds.

For a second Laura keeps on staring at him, only the anger’s gone and it’s just a blank look. And then, as he’s turning to go down the stairs, she starts to say something. Stops, and when he turns back, she’s got her hand lifted as if to reach for him but snatches it back against her thigh. He gives her another second, then turns back.

“So you do get it,” Laura mutters. “You get what to do, right?”

John snorts, and keeps on walking.

* * *

The drive over to the Hale house is pretty quiet. Two squad cars are parked in front of the house, but John can hear them all clustered in the backyard. He texts Jordan and the other man jogs around the corner a couple minutes later, one hand raised.

“The cave-in basically covered everything so I doused a roll of police tape in holy water and I’m just having them put up a cordon in the yard,” he says when he’s reached the porch. “I’m not really sure what we’re going with yet so thinking we have them fan out in the preserve next? Have them look for any more explosives?”

“Explosives?” John says.

“Well, the gas line’s on the other side of the house, so, trying to come up with something here,” Jordan says, shrugging. He looks at John for a moment. “You look like shit. Are you sure you shouldn’t be at the hospital?”

“Talia’s here, isn’t she?” John says.

Jordan hesitates, as if they both can’t hear her heartbeat in the basement. He glances around, then steps closer. “She has _state troopers_ on speed-dial, John. I thought it was pretty goddamn impressive when you got me into the station here a month after you, but that’s something else.”

“Yeah, it is,” John says, and then pushes past Jordan into the house. When he hears the other man start to speak, he lifts a hand and waves it off. “Just keep them outside. I don’t really care what the story is, they just need to be out here till Talia and I leave.”

If Jordan objects, John doesn’t hear it. He just keeps going through the house and down into the basement, where somebody’s digging into the floor.

It’s Talia, of course. The state troopers, yeah, that’s showy, but what stops John in his tracks is seeing her standing ankle-deep in a hole in the middle of the basement floor. When he’d left, there’d been carpet and he assumed foundation would be under that, but somehow she’s gotten the carpet yanked up and has broken through the concrete under that, and is raising a sledgehammer to keep on going.

She knows he’s there. Her head moves but her arm doesn’t stop and the sledgehammer comes down on whatever she’s using as a chisel. The impact shakes her whole body, sending her back a few inches. She has to get up from her squat to lever away the chunks she’s just created.

John steps off the stairs and Talia glances over, but doesn’t stop moving as she resets her chisel. It’s only when he keeps moving away from her that she finally lowers the tools, frowning and watching him go over to the salt circle where Rafael’s body parts are piled up.

This man got Claudia killed, John thinks. Got a lot of other people killed too—nearly got John’s son killed. He should feel something—if not relief, then anger. But all he can think, looking down at the lumps with their rusty-brown salt crusts, is that it would’ve been easier to come up with a cover story if she’d just stopped at the head.

“What are you doing?” Talia suddenly asks. She’s still in the hole.

“Not sure,” John says. He had had an idea when he’d left the hospital—something about stopping her before she did something wrong, explaining about how they’d thought they’d killed Rafael before and what you have to do to make sure it _sticks_. But looking down at this…this _thing_.

This thing. It is a thing now, not a person. This thing that has eaten up the last few years of John’s life and Stiles’ life and the lives of their closest friends…it’s a thing. And John has figured out how to make their lives work around so many _things_ , you’d think that nothing out there could faze him anymore. Sure.

“He’s dead.” Talia stops, blinking, as John twitches. She tilts her head. “I surprised you.”

“I was thinking,” John says, shrugging. “We have super senses, but we get distracted like anybody else.”

Talia nods slowly, as if this is an actual nugget of wisdom he’s feeding her. A wisp of her hair drifts down her cheek—she’s got it pulled back into a messy bun—and she raises her hand and where it’s not grey with dust, it’s streaked with drying blood. She’s got scrapes and cuts all over her fingers. “He’s dead?”

“Are you asking me?” John says after a moment.

“Well, you—one of you said. That it’s hard to tell sometimes, and clearly, he was buried back there.” Talia waves vaguely with her hand at the broken doorway. She’s talking in a slightly detached way, as if they’re discussing a movie that caught her interest but that’s still a movie. “Parrish was saying the salt was enough for now, but he’d have to check if anything else needed to be done.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we have to,” John says. He doesn’t really sound any more with it. “We might…burning it might be better. Sometimes you have to take it apart all the way.”

“Ah,” Talia says, and then she turns and looks at the hole she’s pounded into the ground. She shivers and John tenses, thinking she might be going into shock—but then she just wraps one arm around her and continues to stare at the hole. “So you’ll take it out and do that somewhere else.”

John nods. Then realizes she’s not looking at him. “Yeah, we’ll figure out something. We won’t burn your house down.”

“I think that might have been better,” Talia says suddenly. She sucks in her breath, then tosses the sledgehammer she’s been using onto a nearby chair cushion and walks around the edge of the salt circle. Her bun’s coming undone and her hair keeps him from seeing her expression, but he can hear her breathing coming faster and faster. “I thought it was making a point back then, to keep it. To keep everything I had, and get more, and just—just _show_ people that. But God, ten years of him under this floor and I just _want him gone_.”

She turns savagely around, so quickly that her body sways and John gets over by her, thinking she’s losing her balance and is going to fall on top of Rafael. He’s wrong—she skids back from him, eyes wide, and then makes for the staircase as if now she’s running from him. But the moment her foot lands on the first step, she sags down, and then, after a heaving breath, she sinks onto the seat, her head leaning against the rail.

“I don’t even know what I was thinking, keeping him around,” Talia mutters. Her eyes are closed. “What was I _thinking_.”

“That you needed to hide a dead body?” John says.

She looks up sharply. For a second he thinks she might be riding anger out of her fugue, but then she slumps again. “Yes. Well. I wasn’t so good at that back then.”

“It’s not like it’s that easy,” John says. His eyes drift back to Rafael, and he thinks: _be angry_.

He’s not.

“I suppose you are an expert in that sort of thing,” Talia says, drawing his eyes back to her. She’s got her mouth twisted into something that could be called a smile, if you didn’t look closer than the outline. “I’m…I’m not. Oh, everything besides bodies, of course…but there was only him. There was only ever _supposed_ to be him—my husband, I mean.”

“Yeah, I got told,” John says.

He probably should get started on Rafael’s body right now. Scott’s out of danger and Melissa…needs time, and Stiles might be in the room with them but if he knows his son, the last thing Stiles is doing is resting. He’s probably wrapping up the research on just what the hell Rafael is—was—and what to do about it, all John has to do is check his phone. Except John doesn’t really want to touch the body.

“Just burying it in the cellar does kind of make sense,” he says after a few more seconds. He lifts his foot, pauses, and then turns around and takes a step away from it. Then another step, and another. “Gets it out of the way, but you still know where it is. If you want to think about it.”

Talia frowns at him. “I thought you said we shouldn’t do that.”

“I know what I said,” John says, and then grimaces at how annoyed he sounds. He ducks his head, slowing, but all she does is raise a brow. And then scoot over, and…hell, he’ll take it. He sits down next to her on the step. “It’s what you want to do and what you should do, right?”

“Well, I thought so,” she mutters. She drops her head into her hand and pushes at the side of her face, then sweeps it back to show a pained expression. “But what the hell do I know…I _wanted_ to just raise my family, and make sure they didn’t get held back by other people, and you know, I really, honestly, wanted to do that the right way. I don’t _want_ to kill people, never have, but here I am.”

John’s phone buzzes. He puts his hand to his pocket, then hesitates. Then sighs and pulls it out, only to see it’s just Jordan. He thinks about it and then pushes it back into his pocket. Not the right thing to do, especially with somebody’s who’s stuck with them through as much as Jordan has, but he just can’t. Jordan also is someone who should be able to figure it out, and right now, John just—needs to not be that person.

“It must be simpler, when you’re not trying to do that,” Talia says.

Her tone makes John look over. She’s looking back like she’s expecting an answer, and John has to take a moment to remember what she’d said. “Not trying to what? Kill people? I don’t actually go around murdering people just because I feel like it.”

“Oh, well, that’s not…” then Talia sighs and rubs at her temple “…all right, that’s probably what I was thinking, and it came out true to that. Sorry.”

“Thanks,” John says, not insincerely.

Talia nods in thanks, and is silent for a moment. Then: “But it is simpler, isn’t it?”

“Simpler than what? Than not being a werewolf?” John says, and now he’s exasperated. “What the hell do you think being a werewolf’s like, exactly? Like I don’t mind psychos basically dictating every move in my life for the last ten years? Because let me tell you, I mind the hell out of that.”

“No, I meant—it’s simpler when everyone else also understands,” Talia says. She stretches out one leg, then pulls it back in, absently brushing at the concrete dust on it. “I don’t think—none of them wanted him _back_ , but I think they all…I don’t think they understand what happened. Even Peter—I think he thinks I had a fit of insanity, that I didn’t know what I was doing—I knew _exactly_ what I was doing. I could’ve picked up something else besides the machete—”

“Why do you have that around, anyway?” John asks. When she looks at him, he shrugs an apology for interrupting her flow. “Sorry, just curious. It’s not that wild out here.”

Talia snorts. “It was from our honeymoon in Mexico, which _was_ wild, and…well, you see what I mean, about knowing what I was doing?”

“I guess,” John says. “So your family doesn’t?”

“Well, we haven’t really talked about it.” Talia’s mouth twists again, before she leans her head against the rail and closes her eyes. “It’s just been very business-like…we took care of it, everyone went off and figured out how to take care of—except they didn’t really, did they? My eldest was trying her damnedest to move out of town, Derek almost let himself be expelled because he didn’t want to tell me so I wouldn’t have to worry about _another_ cover-up and Peter…he’s always telling me let him handle it, for the same reason. Cora’s my only hope, if she’s not too old now—at least you all seem to talk to each other.”

The noise that comes out of John right then is pretty bizarre-sounding, he has to admit. He deserves the stare Talia gives him. But he can’t stop himself from making another one, and then he has to drop his face into his hand until he gets control over himself.

“ _That’s_ what you think?” he says, when he can speak again.

“You obviously coordinate,” Talia says, blinking. “You always seem to know what the rest of you are up to, and—are werewolves telepathic? Peter and I have been talking about this, because there are times where you clearly aren’t calling or texting each other, but—John, are you _laughing_? Or dying, I can’t tell.”

“Both, little bit,” John gasps. He gets control over himself faster this time, and lets out a last wheezing breath before he sits back. “Hell. Look—we’re better at killing people. I don’t brag about that, but I’ll admit to it. But all the rest…my best friend’s in the hospital with her son and this should be the happiest day they’ve had in years, but I don’t know if this is going to be the day that breaks them instead. I don’t know. And Stiles—he hasn’t had a goddamn childhood, he’s just spent all his time learning how to defend himself, and I—fuck, I’m thinking I have to find somewhere with a lot of open space because the next town is going to have to have the room for a lot.”

When he finishes, he exhales and looks across the room at Rafael’s body again. It hasn’t changed—he’s not sure why he’d thought it would. He should really know by now, that’s not the thing that’s going to fix it all.

“The next town?” Talia asks.

“Yeah, where we go next,” John says.

“You’re moving?” she says. When he looks at her, she’s frowning. “You found him, I thought that was the point.”

“Well, yeah, but…we don’t stay long. We usually can’t—you can put together a good cover story but it’s still better to not be there if it unravels,” John says.

“But is that going to help?” Talia asks. “It seems like that’s the last thing that’s going to, if you move now. If things are as bad as you say—”

“What, do you really think staying here’s a good idea?” John says.

Talia pauses. It’s not a hesitation, he realizes; she’s not doing it because she’s uncertain, but just because she’s thinking through something. “Two home invasions, that’s all everyone else has really seen so far,” she says after a moment. “Unless you’ve already gone ahead and admitted there’s a body…but if you have, I think we can still do something.”

He looks at her.

“Well, I won’t brag about it, but I admit to knowing how to hide a murder and live in the same small town,” Talia says dryly. She tilts her head, looking at John. “I’ll also admit I’m in a very strange mood right now, but I’m not insane. And…I don’t really have many people I can talk to about this sort of thing. I know, I _should_ talk to my family, but…”

“They’re too close to it sometimes, anyway,” John says. “You can’t, with them. You have to look after them, and then that just makes it…”

“So we could talk about it?” Talia says. “You and I don’t really know each other.”

John looks at her for another second, then lets out a startled laugh. “You serious? Because—look, you know I was letting you fuck me because I figured it was an easy way to handle you.”

“Yes, and you know I was fucking you because I thought the same,” Talia says. She pushes at her hair, then looks up at him again. The smile that’d been threatening to slip onto her face goes away, and suddenly she smells uncertain. “I like you, actually. I like that you put it that way, letting me fuck you, because you saw that—you didn’t just see me using you, you really saw how, and I think—I think I’d like to not just use you. And…we both need help, it sounds like. We could…”

“Date? While we’re covering up felonies?” John says.

“Well, if you put it like that.” She shrugs, and the uncertainty in her scent increases, undercutting her nonchalant act. “I was thinking we start with just—just talking. Besides the cover-up.”

“Sure,” John says, without thinking.

Talia seems to sense that, because her brows go up, even as the dominant note in her scent turns hopeful. She sits there, watching him, so he can’t help but start thinking about what this would really mean, and how much work it would be and the risks he and Stiles and the McCalls would have to take, and…still, it does make sense to him. What they’re doing is broken—they have no reason to do it anymore, the reasons why they were doing it are all broken or dead now. They need to do something else, and this isn’t any worse than what they’ve already done.

“Sure,” he says again, quieter and slower. He watches her, watches out her jaw loosens and her breathing slows, and then he pushes himself off the wall. Moves his arm out and back, and after a moment, she lets herself shift over and lean into him, as he wraps his arm around her waist. “Sure, let’s talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if they ever got around to explaining why Beacon Hills has big disused sewer tunnels, but before and after the gold rush, people did dig mines in random places over the western states, hoping for a lucky strike. That's my explanation.
> 
> Okay, if you've watched _Supernatural_ , the salt thing is familiar but that show didn't actually invent the idea that salt is a barrier to evil things.
> 
> Next installment in this series is the last one, and the one with all the Peter/Stiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody ever talks about enhanced senses of taste, but if everything else is, I don't see why that wouldn't be too. And people who are supertasters have enough trouble when somebody's chopped garlic on the cutting board and then didn't wash it well before going onto the fruit or whatever.
> 
> The Lon Chaney Jr. werewolf films had that line about werewolves coming out on nights when the wolfsbane blooms, even though wolfsbane blooms during the day, too.


End file.
